[dropcap]S[/dropcap]urvival in modern businesses is more about cutting cost and trimming down expenditures to the minimum while spending less time to do more. As a real estate realtor or agent, frugality is one of your foremost professional virtues. You aim to use the smallest stone in killing the biggest bird if possible. You will have to save as much money and time on everything, even your real estate bookkeeping.
Property management is a tough job in itself and having the right tools and a system in place will help you grow your business faster. Real estate bookkeeping in the first place spreads across keeping neat records of all your financial proceedings, making sure the bank accounts are judiciously balanced, no leaking money, all checkbooks in place tidily as well as posting credit card and debit card expenditures. The list stretches on almost exhaustively.
Seems like something that takes a heavy chunk of time and money to fix, right? But there are ways you can do your real estate bookkeeping that doesn’t involve you sorting out accounts even in breakfast all through to dinner; allowing you to fix the financial books seamlessly while saving you money and costly time. Let us peer at these ways.
The first and simple way is to keep records judiciously
Accumulated bookkeeping responsibilities will suck such volume of energy from you and time. Make sure to keep the little tidy records in place- as soon as they are transacted. It breaks no bone when you sort out the record quickly after every transaction. Diligently preserve the receipts, the hard copy and the digital somewhere readily accessible, somewhere as safe as Paradise. They are a couple of smart options for you to curate your records. Apps like Hello Expense can help you safely keep your receipts in the pictorial form.
Integrate the befitting bookkeeping software into your procedures
You need to immunize your bookkeeping with technology, so it doesn’t get infected with human errors. Here, we are talking about embracing automated options. Manual bookkeeping via spreadsheet is no longer in fashion in a contemporary bookkeeping setting. There are many accounting software for you to try out and perform your bookkeeping with the best of accuracy and minimal time.
Don’t get put off by the cost of these software, look preferably at the gains. The time it would save you and the cost it would save you from manual errors. Moreover, there is a number of affordable accounting software like Quickbooks.
You should find the energy to learn some accounting jargons
If you are in Rome, you will have to behave like the Romans. Similarly, if you must do your bookkeeping properly, you have to learn some basic bookkeeper’s diction. These terminologies, particularly to the accounting niche will make you quite feel at home when you transact your business and document the proceedings. You should learn some crumbs of jargons like cash flow, accrual, balance sheet, ROI, receivable and all that.
It makes things quite smooth either directly in your bookkeeping or indirectly in communicating with clients and other bookkeepers. This is sure to save you costly time and money.
Try your best to separate personal accounts from business accounts
This is important in professional real estate bookkeeping. Make sure the lines don’t cross, personal accounts should stay discriminately far from business accounts. Else by the end of the year when you want to settle the books, you will see that personal expenditure and business expenditure have been so matrimonially bonded and now hard to separate. This would create a mess to resolve your finances.
Joining personal and business accounts is unforgivably unprofessional. It will save you a lot of time and money in your bookkeeping if you can create a wide berth between your business account and personal accounts. It doesn’t matter either if you are a small real estate business.
Always do it right the right time
In bookkeeping, a lot has to do with punctuality and best practices. Don’t cut corners lazily, neither should you postpone your documentation. Make bookkeeping habitual and try as much as possible to follow standard established procedures. Avoid the lure to cheat protocols and compromise. Make a faithful schedule for when you would want to do your bookkeeping. Weekly, monthly- but make sure not to miss it. A stitch in time these days saves more than nine.
Try to critically examine which assets are worth the bookkeeping stress
Real estate bookkeeping can be draining as it demands a sense of mini-omnipotence. You are watching over a large number of assets and dutifully taking down your financial records. This could be honestly exasperating as sometimes you see that you are spending more in bookkeeping (pertaining to time and money) than you are getting from these properties. So you may need to throw some load overboard to steady the ship. You may have to reevaluate these properties and determine which is worth bookkeeping. If not sell them or better still replace them with improved properties. If not it is as wasteful as wearing a costly tuxedo to propose to a blind partner, she may never see what you are wearing. Same way, why waste money and time bookkeeping properties not bringing in enough?
You may ultimately choose to hire an accountant
The duty of bookkeeping is central to your success as a realtor, agent or even generally as a real estate business. Trying to squeeze through it with common sense or lack of specialty may prove hazardous. Considering the size of your business, your bookkeeping duty may overwhelm you. You spend time which would have been more productive in other managerial endeavors, sweating to sort out the books in laborious bookkeeping.
So why don’t you just bring in a professional accountant to help you sort it out on a modest budget? At the end of the day, Donald Trump however hard working he is can’t deputize for himself and relieve Mike Pence. Specialization and teamwork bring out the best in all of us.
Eventually, no one has enough time and no one has enough money. This is why we are vindicated to aggressively chase cost-cutting bookkeeping procedures that are even more time saving and productive. Always remember this popular nugget of wisdom: a dollar saved is more valuable than a dollar earned!
